Buns of Steel: Why Brewery Taprooms All Have the Same Chair | CraftBeer.com

If you’ve visited a bar, restaurant, or taproom in the 21st century, there’s a near-certainty that you’ve sat in some version of The Chair. The metal industrial seating comes in a rainbow of colors, with holes in the seat and cross beams to awkwardly rest feet. The back, if there is one, barely bests a bed of nails for comfort.

“They’re too tiny for regular human heinies and aggressively uncomfortable, as if they’re daring you to actually sit on them,” says Niko Tonks, head brewer of Little Thistle Brewing in Rochester, Minnesota.

The Chair has become the shaker pint of taproom furniture: ubiquitous, affordable, stackable, easy to clean, and largely unloved. No one is excited to sit in The Chair. But there is rarely an option, like a taproom with all IPAs on tap. The Chair keeps proliferating, too. In an average year, restaurant supply company WebstaurantStore.com will sell around 10,000 versions of The Chair from Lancaster Table & Seating. How did such polarizing seating rear up at taprooms?

For CraftBeer.com, I look into how those chairs spread everywhere.